20

Almost exactly two years ago, i shot a very similar shot I had called Ice meets water. With time, I accumulated a few more tricks up my sleeves and I wanted to revisit this shot with what I’ve learned. Here is the result:

07

This past saturday was the first competition of the 9th Tour de Bloc season and the first thing I noticed was how big the women’s field was compared to other years (about 35 open competitors)! I found that to be a real good indicator of the tour’s success and the popularity of bouldering in Canada, which is exciting to witness.

This competition also proved to be interesting because there were so many new faces to the finals! My two favourite competitors to watch on Saturday were Kacy Wilson and Fred Charron. They both put up super impressive performances, gave it their all, and showed that they are real contenders for the number one spot. Also, I particularly enjoyed women’s and men’s 3rd problem, because of their very intricate beta reminiscing of the European-style problems we are used to seeing on the World Cup series (Thank you Tonde!). It’s unfortunate that no one could manage to finish men’s third problem, but great fun nonetheless!

05

The ninth Tour de Bloc series had some amazing competitions. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend as many competitions as I have in previous years. I did get to photograph the Joe Rockhead’s comp and the Climber’s rock one. The associated blog posts are here:

03

Tour de bloc 9 begins this weekend at our favorite local gym: Joe Rockhead’s. Today, I was lucky enough to get a preview of the final problems for the comp this weekend. Brace yourselves! It really is looking like this competition will be one of the best we’ve seen out east! It surely will set the tone for the rest of this year’s tour de bloc. Hope you all can make it!!

As I promised many of you, here is a sneak peek of the finals problem: